After Seven Years of Marriage, I Found Out He Was Trying to Tie Me Down Spiritually

I got married when I was twenty-four: young, beautiful, naive, and in love. Men would stop me and ask for my number even when I was wearing my ring. They didn’t believe me when I said I was married. They thought I was saying it just to push them away. I felt disrespected that I would wear a ring and still get that call. “Or is my ring invisible?” I wondered.

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To make it more visible, I added another wedding ring on my right finger. “If they don’t see the left one, then they’ll definitely see the right one.”

I was so immature even my family doubted if I was ready for marriage or experienced enough to know the ropes. I was determined to make it work, whatever it took.

Our problems started when we had a child. I wasn’t giving him trouble in the house, but he started staying out late, leaving me and the child alone. I complained. I called for his care the way the thunder calls for the rain. I cried sometimes, but nothing changed.

Not long afterwards, I found out about the other women. The ones he travelled with and the ones he hid on his phone. I thought the problem was me. If I played my role well, he wouldn’t have gone for other women. I took the blame and did not fight him. I rather decided to be better, but no matter what I did, the women in his life grew in number.

I started asking questions. When I didn’t get good answers, I brought his family in to have the issues resolved. He promised to do better, but he got better at hiding the women. Things got worse when the second child came. I noticed one girl in his life who never went away. She became the reason we constantly fought.

I begged him to let her go. He told me he would, but that lady never went away. I asked myself, “What does he see in her that he’s clinging to her like she was his messiah?” When I looked in the mirror and compared myself to that girl, I had two children, but that girl could not match me in beauty. “So what’s wrong? I do my best and do my job as a wife, so what’s happening?”

My aunt came to stay with us so she could be closer to a particular health facility where she was receiving care. She came around often when she had a hospital appointment. She came one day, and the following day I had to go and visit my sick mother. My aunt was living in the house with him, yet he was able to bring his girlfriend to come and stay with him.

My aunt thought she was family, but days later, when she watched the way the two were behaving, she concluded they were not family but dating. Yet she didn’t want to tell me about it.

She said she was in her room when the lady came to knock on her door. My husband had gone to work, so it was left with only the two of them. The lady told her, “I learned you’re Becky’s aunt. Please don’t tell her I came around else it will affect their marriage. She thinks I’m dating her husband, but I’m not, so you shouldn’t let her know a woman was here.”

My aunt went crazy and asked, “Who do you take me for? A child? Do you know how long I’ve been on this earth?”

So my aunt picked up the phone and told me everything, and then said, “Don’t let him know that I’m the one who told you, and don’t start a fight because of that.”

I’d gotten to a point in the marriage where nothing surprised me, so I didn’t make a sound about what my aunt told me. I wasn’t even going to ask him about it, but when I returned home, I saw a jacket lying under the sofa. I looked at the size and knew who it was for. When he came back, I asked who the jacket was for and he said, “It’s for Linda.”

Linda. That’s the side chick’s name. “So Linda came here when I was away? You brought your side chick into a house where my aunt is? How do you want her to see me? A fool?”

He didn’t talk back. He went inside and caged himself there. Later that same day, I found earrings belonging to the same girl. I decided I’d had enough, so I moved from the bedroom to the guest room. I needed to take care of myself, the kids, and their mental health.

A few months later, I was looking through an old phone my kids were using and I found a message he had sent to someone. He said, “I want to tie her down spiritually so she wouldn’t be able to divorce me.”

The person sent him a list of items he needed to buy and added instructions on how to use the items to tie me down spiritually. The whole thing sounded bizarre. You don’t like me, so you went for side chicks, but you still want to tie me down spiritually so I don’t leave? Make it make sense. The person also warned him not to let me see any of the items or get a hint he was going to do that. So me knowing it destroyed everything.

The matter was brought before the family once again. They asked him what I had done, and he couldn’t mention a single thing I’d done against him apart from suspicion that I was cheating on him. He told the family I’d moved out of the room and slept alone so I might be cheating. I laughed. I narrated the whole story to the family, everything I’d been through. They already knew part of the story because we had been going before them.

He started bringing women home. I had already decided to leave the house before he did anything diabolical. We had lived in separate rooms for two years. I just told myself, “I have to leave this house for him and go ahead with the divorce because he wasn’t going to do it.”

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I rented a new place and moved with the kids. I got a lawyer and served him with the divorce papers. He accepted all the conditions I stated without a fight. He made it easier for the divorce to happen, and I thank him for that.

I’m still young. After ten years of a tortuous marriage, I still look like I was born yesterday—pretty and free. When I’m ready, I will give love a chance again. Who knows, the second chance might be all I need to find my better half.

—Becky

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